New House Rule

When using rapid fire weapons in combat, such as machine guns, Gatling guns, Nordenfelt guns etc., if anything less than the maximum rate of fire listed for the weapon is attempted, the firer must succeed with a Spirit roll to overcome the natural tendency to 'pour it on' in battle. No extra benefit is gained from a raise.

Gunners with the Knowledge(Gunnery) aka Gunnery skill may ignore this house rule.

Note that using only part of the available ROF may mean that rules-of-thumb must be used for remaining ammo, possibly "shorting" the firer, as ROF 1,2 & 3 refer to 1,5 and 10 rounds expended. If there are not the number of rounds available to equate to the ROF expected, the ROF will drop one class with no change in the amount of ammunition expended. If you have 8 rounds left in your Gatling and crank like crazy, you will shoot all the remaining rounds and achieve only ROF 2. This is not intended to introduce player book-keeping or ammo-gaming, but to reduce GM book-keeping. The wise player character with ammunition to spare will take advantage of his or her weapon's terrifying stopping power and crank like crazy.

Considerations

There are circumstantial benefits to high ROF weaponry.

• Depending on the situation the use of such a weapon will have an automatic surpessing fire effect, requiring enemies to take spirit checks to avoid ducking back behind cover, "hitting the deck" or scattering
• If the leader of an attack wave survives, only the leader rolls for the remaining troops.

EXAMPLE:
Private Joe Smith has D6 Spirit and is manning the company Gatling gun when savage Hill Martian tribesmen attack! He sees the leader riding his gashant ahead of the pack and wants to take a single shot to conserve ammunition, but rolls a 3 on his Spirit test and cranks for all he is worth, killing the mad Martian in a hail of lead but expending half his ammunition to do so. The Hill Martians test to see if they stand firm, fail a group roll and scatter to find cover without returning fire.

EXAMPLE:
Colour Sergeant Flagg is manning the second company Gatling gun when the ambush is attempted. He has the Gunnery skill, and so carefully picks off one of the savages with a single shot without needing to overcome his battle lust.

EXAMPLE:
Reginald Molehusband, adventurer, is lolling around the bow of his steam launch when a party of High martians swoops in intent on murder and mayhem! Gripping his pipe frimly in his mouth he swings the ever-ready Nordenfelt to bear on the leader and, with a weather eye on the number of savages to be seen off, decides to use a single shot. He rolls his spirit (D8 + WD) and gets a 1 and a 6, sending the blighter to his death with a single shot. However, the '1' means that one of the other rounds waiting to be loosed is a dud or a jam. If Reginald shoots singly, this will be his next shot and will fail. If he decides to fire the remaining shells he fires with an effective ROF of 1. The dud round will clear itself on the next pull of the loading lever of his trusty, self-clearing Nordenfelt.